


Feeding the Dead

by JonathansNightFlight



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Ghost Sex, M/M, Mild Gore, Object Insertion, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-08 23:25:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12264228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonathansNightFlight/pseuds/JonathansNightFlight
Summary: Continuation of Pragnificent's Ghost!Will AU with reference's to damnslippyplanet's AU. Hannibal buys a house, in Wolf Trap Virginia, but unbeknownst to him the house comes with a hungry resident. Sharing house, kills and occasionally a body, goes so much better than either could have expected.---Will is floating on bubbly, soapy water. It takes a few tries - and Hannibal only laughs with his eyes - to get it right, awkwardly balancing between submersion and hovering, before he convinces the water the wrap around his form. It is not entirely relaxing, but then again Will senses he was never one for letting go.





	1. Hors d'oeuvre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/gifts), [damnslippyplanet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Hungry Ghost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185203) by [Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent). 



Hannibal shivers as he exits the Bentley. He hugs his overcoat closer to chest - cashmere, a quietly luxurious affair. It is the dawn of an early November day, the cracking of frozen grass under Hannibal’s strides the only sound under the crisp Virginia sky.

Hannibal shivers again, this time so violently and suddenly that his jaw clicks shut.

This is unusual. Icy tendrils slither under the thick material of his coat. They penetrate deep, chilling his blood, causing his pericardial muscles to clench irregularly at the temperature drop. Unusual, since even during the coldest winters the thick cashmere always emerged victorious against the frost.

And then Hannibal looks up and stops mid-stride; there is a bright red smudge on the door, just above the handle. He shifts and can now see that the door is ever so slightly ajar, barely-perceptible white mist coming from inside the house. Hannibal knows he closed the door when he left, carefully locking the house behind him, keeping its secrets sealed, private.

He moves again, feet light. It takes him three perfectly balanced strides to the porch, and the smudge is now a red handprint glistening at the morning light. Breath held tight his chest, Hannibal wraps long fingers around the handle and -

He immediately lets go at the searing - white hot - sizzling burn - pain. Hannibal brings his reddening fingers to his lips and improbably, he smiles.

“Will, can I come in?”

Nothing, and then a deep sigh that seems to rattle the whole house, porch and grounds shivering as one. Hannibal brings his hurt fingers to the door, tracing the red palm print. The blood feels tacky, but doesn’t transfer to his skin.

“Please?”

The door opens suddenly, as if blasted open by a great gust of phantom wind. Hannibal tilts his head as if straining to listen and crosses the threshold.

 

Will is waiting by the fireplace. Red eyes catch the glow from the remnants of a fire. There is a glass of whisky by his side.

“We are out of wood” Will says, absentmindedly swirling the liquid in his glass. Hannibal realises that the glass is not being held by Will, but hovering and swirling all by itself, fractions of inches away from Will’s hand.

“I can chop some more” he replies, pulling a chair facing Will’s. “Though I am sure you would be more efficient at the task”. Hannibal contemplates the whisky bottle, but it is far too early and he is sleep-deprived, even by his standards.

They sit in silence as the cold settles, the last of the fire going out with thin wisps of smoke.

“You were gone for a long time”, Will remarks.

Hannibal smiles. He has come to realise that the bluntness was not caused by the passing or the isolation but it was always something inherent to Will.

“I believe time is not an issue for you”.

“It is not”, and then, “I went to the attic the other day. Or maybe this is not the right choice of words, since I’m always in the attic, right?”

Silence. Hannibal’s hand twitches, but the twitch gets swallowed by a shiver. He looks down at his hands, resting on his laps, the fingers of his right hand now an angry red.

“Are you expecting an apology, Will?”

“Of course not”. The clink of the still floating glass against something sharper, harder. “Have you found me a body yet?”

“Not yet”.

The silence is interrupted as a drop of dark red, that had been gathering and festering and thickening on Will’s scalp, runs down a matted curl and falls on the ground, splattering thickly. Hannibal tries, in vain, to trace the trajectory of the blood on the carpet. The carpet resembles something out of a Pollock catalog - red splotches and lines intersecting with splatters of mud, flecks of ashes, burn marks.

“Are you expecting an apology for your carpet, Hannibal?” Their eyes meet over the rim of Will’s glass and Hannibal realises he has been fostering a scowl, and there is something smouldering and blue in Will’s red eyes, and Hannibal can’t stand it.

“Get inside me” it is probably comes out a bit more pleading than commanding, but Will smiles, and the cold spell lifts and something inside of Hannibal releases.

And the next moment Will’s form becomes intangible, a familiar stream of liquid light. And then - finally - warmth touches the Hannibal’s chest and sips inside. Taking its time it brushing against soft organs and hard bone, touching places hollow, acidic, raw. And then it expands and rests and with it comes a feeling of tight fullness he hasn’t felt since - before - and his lips are pulled, skinned tight. He brings his hurt fingers to his mouth - the burn is now gone, leaving behind smooth pale skin - and he touches Will’s tipsy smile.

“Here you are”, Hannibal says out loud, enjoying the utterance and receiving of the words at once, a closed circuit. And then “It might not be your body, but I got you a body. Help me unwrap it?”

He feels the smile widen and an unspeakable need pulse.

And so they walk to the car.

 

——

 

“Let me give you a bath,” Hannibal offers. They are two once more. Will vibrates something fierce, hovering by the window, tightly coiled.

“This is not really blood, you understand?”

“I understand.” Hannibal walks up to him, close, crowding him - and at moment like that it feels closer than sharing a body. Everything is in focus, too sharp, there is nothing but Hannibal’s teeth, crooked, visceral. Will flickers, staticky, for the first time in months.

“Will”, a pause, “it is ok if you don’t want me to.”

Will solidifies, and Hannibal, helplessly, cups a blood stricken cheek. He pauses at how dry it feels where his eyes would swear there is sticky, congealing blood. There is more than was there in the morning. A flake of red has reached under Will’s eye and Hannibal rubs slow circles with a thumb over it, Will’s unruly beard tickling his palm.

Eventually, the spectre looks up and exhales - warm.

“But is it ok if that I want you to?”

 

——

 

Will is floating on water. It takes a few tries - and Hannibal only laughs with his eyes - to get it right, awkwardly balancing between submersion and hovering, before he convinces the water the wrap around his form. It is not entirely relaxing, but then again Will senses he was never one for letting go.

He knows he must have washed his body once, lathered his hair and trimmed his beard, but he can’t recall the steps, the textures. It is these empty spaces of non-memories that make him feel inhuman, more so than hovering or fading in and out of space. Yet he somehow knows bathing must have been for him a quick and orderly affair. And so he embraces the novelty of the coquettish grooming as Hannibal applies shampoo and lathers for the third time.

They don’t speak and the movements grow aimless and repetitive, hypnotic. Until Hannibal curves his fingers through heavy curls and tags, and Will startles because for a moment, between awareness and dream, he feels the raw sharpness of pain. And then it is gone, and Hannibal hands are soothing once more, and Will lets himself float.

—-

Will is being indulged, he knows. Hannibal wraps a fluffy towel around him, pulled tight to the point where Will has to make a conscious effort to stay solid and hard so that the fabric doesn’t press through him.

“A week” Hannibal offers.

“A week” Will repeats, his voice a perfect mirror of Hannibal’s inflection, his accent.

“The maximum amount of time that I am allowed to spend away. Without you throwing a tantrum or destroying my carpet”.

Will refuses to dignify the last sentence.

“A week from the moment you show up, or from the moment you leave?”

“Don’t push it”

Hannibal smiles and Will takes his smile for his own.

“The carpet, was it expensive?”

“Very”.

“Good”.

“Would you like to choose the new one?”

There is a ripple where Will’s apparition was, and then nothing, and then a ripple and he is there again. Something bites inside Hannibal’s chest at the ease in which Will slips the boundaries of his own flesh, browsing through the physical dimensions of his house with a languid precision that Hannibal can only imitate within the membranous walls of his memory palace.

Will thinks. “Something soft” a pause “I like fur, I think”.

Hannibal sees him then, fleshy, naked but for steaming hot, visceral blood. Draped over his fresh kills, an amalgamation of all apex predators, a chimaera. Grinning and coming for him. Hannibal blinks the visage away and wonders, for the first time, if his offerings will ever be enough to sate the hunger of something, someone so radiant.


	2. Soup / Consommé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let me take you out Will”.
> 
> Will is already shaking his head violently, no, and daylight itself seems to flicker.
> 
> “I would care for you. I would pick you up, gently, every little piece of you.” Hannibal’s eyes glow almost as fiery as Will’s. “My hands would be warm. You like my hands, you like when feeling them on you, you like feeling me on them.”

It is early December and Will’s mood is rotten. It seeps in the bark of the cedar trees behind the house, and the lone apple tree by the stream and soon the bark peels and cracks and blisters and smells sweet, like decay. It drips from the ceiling and gathers like slimy condensation at the back of Hannibal’s neck. It itches but he squashes the urge to scratch. He’d been away for less than a week - barely.

“What is it then?” Will’s voice is cracked and honeyed and blistering. “A perfect little white-picket family you keep stashed away, always running back to?

“A blond petite wife and 2.4 kids?

“No, of course not, that would be too on the nose. Brunette and fiercely independent, one son from a previous marriage, and a brand new baby girl?

“Does she have your red-speckled eyes Hannibal? Does she share your tastes?”

Hannibal meets his feverish dead-on. He cocks his head and takes the spectre in. Will, solid, vivid Will, has taken to wearing his bloodstains as a mask. It curves around his mouth, nose, eyes. Somedays it looks like muzzle, and others like the wing-stains of a moth. Hannibal has never felt more proud or protective of anything he's created before the day he first saw these markings bloom.

“You tell me, Will. You’ve been inside my head times innumerable. I have felt your touch in memories I thought lost, I have seen you dig out fragments of moments long-buried, and I let you have them.” He lets the shadows stretch behind his eyes, two ghouls staring blankly at each other. “So tell me, dearest, was there a family you’ve stumbled upon in the corridors of my mind?”

“Fragments.”

“Of white-picket fences?”

“No.” The air grows thinner, and for a moment the smell of ozone recedes. And then Will blinks dark eyes, and an inky substance leaks down his cheek, slipping into his mouth, despoiling the patterns of red.

“But in your mind’s palace not every room has a door.”

“Doors, I've discovered, mean precious little to you, darling boy.”

Between them, a window cracks.

“Doors…

“You don’t know how it is when you leave”, and Will’s voice is a dry rasp once again, lips cracking and receding in front of Hannibal’s eyes until the bloodied teeth have been stripped bare.

“So tell me“.

“There are no doors for me. No handles, no windows, no openings.

“It is always closed - shut - and musty and I can see the maggots that live in my brain breed in my eyes"

“Then, please, let me take you out”.

A familiar argument. Will is already shaking his head, no, and the daylight itself seems to flicker.

“I would care for you. I would pick you up, gently, every little piece of you.” Hannibal’s eyes glow, coals, almost as bright as Will’s. “My hands would be warm. You like my hands, you like feeling them on you, you like feeling me with them.”

Will stares at Hannibal’s hands, transfixed.

“I would place you on clean muslin, wrap you tight. I would carry you by the stream and with the smoothest knife, I’d clean your bones from every impurity. I would wash them with myrrh and oil

“I would kiss your inseams. Your temple. Your thirteenth rib. I would learn every curve and slope and chip on them”

“But it is such a shame you can’t eat me, right?” Will interrupts, and it is a choked snarl.

“I would. If you let me. I’d powder up a bone, a tooth, your finger - if you’d let me.

“I’d powder it up, but not too fine, coarse enough so I could taste it

“I would make bread, maybe, pan de muertos and while its cooling, instead of sugar, I’d scatter you.”

“Stop it”.

“I’d keep your hair. I’d keep whatever scraps remain of your clothing”.

“Shut. Up”. The window shatters inwards. Shards rain down them both, passing cleanly through Will and drawing tiny red lines on Hannibal. There is no light, no sound, no movement but the slow trickle of red on Hannibal.

Will wants to hide inside the very bones of the house, but he can’t bear one more day of absence. So he asks the one thing he needs to know.

“Why do you keep coming back?” Will cracks, because he is spirit itself and he survived his own death but he knows, more clearly than he has ever known anything, that he won’t survive Hannibal.

“You have visited the insides of my mind palace. I've taken you there.” Timeless moments watching the joy in Hannibal’s face as the most eclectic art shows would take place in the corridors, the streets of Florence would unfold themselves, the most fragrant garden would welcome their strolls. “What did you find in the heart of the chapel, Will?”

“Just a pile of bones.”

“Not just. Never just.”

Hannibal stands, shakes a few glass shards loose.

“May I?”

And then his mouth, moist with blood, is on Will’s - and every time he imagined it he had trouble staying solid but he just is, and Hannibal is, and this time he is certain he can feel an acute sense of pain where his heart would have been.

They kiss again and it is the dry push of textures, but the blood, gracious, accommodates the slide of flesh against solidified energy.

And then Will realises that it is the right side of his chest that’s hurting and as the separate just long enought for Hannibal to draw a single gulp of air, brow’s furrowed in agony. Will knows then whose heartache he is mirroring.

——

Later, in bed, Will does not apologise, but he offers to replace the window. Hannibal kisses the words away and they lay back down on the bed, sheets soiled by a singular release.

Will listens to the heartbeat, steady, centering. More and more often, he can feel the tempo of Hannibal’s pulse beating at the back of his conscience. Even when he is gone for long days.

“You are not going to find me a body”, Will says.

“Would that disappoint you?”

“You want me trapped here. Waiting on you.” Will accuses.

“I am at least, if not more, as trapped as you are”.

“Bullshit”.

Long moments pass, and Will thinks Hannibal has fallen asleep.

“I wouldn’t just eat one finger, I am afraid” words soft, tickling Will’s hair.

“I would not be able to resist you. I would need to consume every bit of you. I would make a stew and drink it to the last sip.”

Will smiles, and the house settles around them.

——

Hannibal leaves the next morning with a goodbye peck on the lips and a promise of smoky brandy, for the colder days of winter.

A week later, he is not back.

Two weeks later, he is not back.

Three weeks later, Will climbs up the stairs and breaks the lock of the chest open. He spends five days laying on top of his bones until he starts screaming. He blinks out of existence but stubbornly, whatever is keeping him there slams him back into being. Will floats to the stream and lets the water close over him. Eyes open, he looks up, watching the river flow over him, the fish and leaves swirling by until the ice settles. 

On the foty-third day the muffled sounds of nature are broken by the angry revving of SVUs. Will stands by the shrivelled apple tree and watches as a dozen of operants in FBI-marked vests step on his land, kick his door in and trample the soft, furry carpet on his living room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in a day! Don't you guys start getting used to it, it is a statistical anomaly.
> 
> I wanted to give all my gratitude to damnslippyplanet for this chapter, since it was your image of Hannibal caring for Will's bones that evoked a big part of this chapter.


	3. Fish / Yakimono

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can ghosts experience fear? Will is faced with the sticky particulars of "fear" and "feeling".
> 
> \--------------
> 
> Will is curled up on the floor of Hannibal’s bedroom. Will’s bedroom-no-more. Or maybe never-was. The details escape him. He’s tried thinking of it as theirs. “Ours”. Somehow, it doesn’t sit well with him. They seem to occupy space in sequence, one after another. Not simultaneously. One in life, one in death. So he accepts his lack of ownership. After all, there are plenty of spaces he owns. The loveseat by the fireplace. His spot at the porch, where he can sometimes hear dogs playing.
> 
> By the stream.
> 
> Inside Hannibal.

> From what little we are told about the Garden of Eden it appears to have been, in the tradition of other paradises, the antipode of wilderness. ‘Eden’ was the Hebrew word for 'delight,’ and Genesis represents it as a pleasant place, indeed. The Garden was well watered and filled with edible plants. Adam and Eve were relieved of the necessity of working in order to survive. Fear was also eliminated, since with one exception the creations that shared paradise were peaceful and helpful. But the snake encouraged the first couple to eat of the forbidden fruit and as punishment they were driven out of the Garden. The world Adam and Eve now faced was a wilderness, a 'cursed’ land full of 'thorns and thistles.;  
>  — Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and The American Mind

   
Occasionally, when Hannibal was gone for longer than two days, Will would find himself hovering by the bedroom’s door. He doesn't enter at first; he doesn’t want to lie on the bed. The sleep that won’t come mocks him.

So he hovers. Eventually crosses the threshold. Holding a pillow up to his face, he tries to sniff - mimicking Hannibal's oftentimes exaggerated intake of breath. Inspecting the space underneath the bed, warding off other monsters. Picking a sentence or two from the book on the bedside table.

Lying in wait.

Hannibal’s footsteps echo through the house. This time, he’s only been gone for three, maybe four days.

Will is curled up by Hannibal's bed, in Hannibal's bedroom. Will’s bedroom-no-more. Or maybe never-was. The details evade him. He had tried thinking of it as theirs. “Ours", the word doesn’t sit well with him. They seem to occupy space sequentially. Not simultaneously. One in life, one in death. So he accepts his lack of ownership. After all, there are plenty of spaces he owns. The love-seat by the fireplace. His porch, from where he can sometimes hear dogs playing.

By the stream.

Inside Hannibal.

And then the bedroom door creaks open, and Will feels the steps vibrate within him.

“Will” a pause, “are you awake?”

He lets his form slither, wound up tighter.

“I think I like the sound of your footsteps.” They are getting closer. “I can hear them always when you are in the house. Even when you move quiet as a shadow, I feel them as if you were walking on me. The guests that you bring, they are just shivering shapes. You are solid.” He is saying too much. “It is nice, that’s all.”

And then the steps halt. Behind him, above him, Hannibal unbuttons his heavy coat. The cashmere is soft and body-warm, as Hannibal wraps the coat around him, and then he is pulled in a tight embrace from behind. They lie on the floor, spooning, Hannibal’s heartbeat the only sound between the two of them.

“I am taking you to bed now”. Will lets him.

Where breathing is a forgotten act, following Hannibal’s lead in bed - as in the basement - comes easy. Will enters a state of trance as Hannibal’s moves become languid, almost performative. As he removes his clothes, undoing stiff cufflinks first, loosening his tie, losing the belt, sometimes unclasping garter-belts that reach mid-way up thick calves. Running a hand across his own belly through an open shirt, firm, sated. Lips open and moist, head lolling back ever so slightly, propped on just elbows. Watching, always watching Will, so hungry and warm. And Will delights.

There is nothing polite in their joining, anything human discarded along with the clothes. They rub against each other, energy to matter. Hannibal pours a handful of lube, spreading it with clawed fingers, and the liminal space between them is filthy with the sounds. There is a spark of something new in Hannibal’s stare and Will is tempted to reach a fingertip behind his eyeball and pluck it, make it his. Consume it. But he stays away from Hannibal’s mind - observing from outside in becomes a heady pleasure of an altogether different nature.

Hannibal turns over on hands and knees, reaches for the bedside drawer. Body stretched, thighs open. There, in the drawer, a rapidly growing collection of vibes and strap-on cocks. He turns to look at Will over his shoulder, a dusky flush playing on his cheeks, a perfect disarray.

“Choose one. Use it on me”.

Will forgets how to breathe only to remember he doesn’t. Something tickles his bones, sweet like bubblegum and raw like envy. He leans into Hannibal, covers his body with his aura, tight, maps out the heat of his core, the embers between his legs. He scratches across the chest, swallow but wicked. Hannibal shivers something violent.

“I will beg”.

He won’t have to.

At the crescent of a deep thrust, Hannibal’s toes curl involuntarily and his lungs let out a pure sound like a sigh. Will takes that moment inside and forces his fluid mind to build a wall around it. He won’t accept losing this to whatever void ate his school years, the memory of scents. Much later, he will recall that this was the very first door he opened for fear to enter.

  
——————————

  
Will does not experience fear as cold. Cold is, nowadays, a flicker of his fingers and ice a flavour, the strawberry ice-cream smattered around the smile of a child.

The Feds’ footsteps echo in his bones. There is something like a headache forming around what used to be his temples.

Fear is not in the back of his throat. Nothing like a knot obstructing the windpipe, silencing screams. He would know; once, fear wired his jaw shut, until one of his molars shattered. He was dead less than 42 hours later.

Each pair of boots trampling his house hums in his innards like the rising of blood pressure.

He can't experience it as a hand clenching around his heart. There is no heart to skip a beat, to pulse in panic.

But what Will has is the house - and all at once, he sees the muddy footprints polluting his floors, his carpet, and the anger overflows, overtakes the absences.

He zeroes in on the loudest voice, the broad-shouldered figure of the Man in Charge. Will knows these men, knows what makes them tick and in a moment he knows how to make the ticking stop and then a pause.

Somewhere between the hat, the thick coat and the scruff voice, a name, Jack - a figure of a memory ripped from the Before and thrown into the Now.

No matter. Will looks and sees the neat little trails of a spiderweb unfold inside Jack’s skull. He sees Hannibal and has to steel his resolve and keep looking - a clever rookie, a lucky break, a daring trap, and then the breakout, the chase. Blood, familiar blood.

A botched escape, but not botched enough.

And then a phone rings louder than the footsteps and the belched “All clear!” choruses, and Jack picks up. “Crawford” a pause “how credible is the source?” and then he swears something vicious. He has to make a decision - there was a sighting, Hannibal, in a stolen vehicle, crossing an altogether different state-line.

The moment of indecision; the call that will make or break a career. So Will reaches inside that heavy-set skull and touches one memory here, one worry there. Fuels the ever-present need to win. And Jack Crawford clenches a fist and recalls his dogs.

The uniforms pour out like poison exiting a gaping wound. Will looks on as they stacking themselves in cars and vans and drive off, one by one. And as the thrumming beat dissipates, Jack, far enough from the house and Will’s influence, barks out:

“Sondheim, Perez! You two, stay and keep watch. Keep the car behind the house. Update me every two hours” And Will sees blood, thick, seeping from their doomed names.

—————————

“I’ve done something very bad”.

Hannibal licks thick red down Will’s face, delighting in the taste of iron and ozone.

“Bad is relative, Will”, another lick, “You are so very good when doing some very bad things”.

Their well done bad thing has painted Will a fresher shade of crimson. It is blatantly obvious that Hannibal’s artful, fatal surgery has given way to splatters, blunt-force and finger-painting.

Will lets Hannibal clean him up with his mouth for a moment longer.

“I don’t mean now”. Hannibal pauses. Still cradling Will’s head in both hands, he draws back and swallows with a click.

“When?”

“I don’t know.” Hannibal notices that Will won’t meet his eyes when he enters his moods, and that’s the only time the impossible miracle in front of him connects with the once popular rumours of the tantalising case of the eccentric ex-cop with the atypical empathy disorder, Mister Will Graham. Alana’s best kept not-quite-secret. Alana’s too-well-kept not-secret, never to be found or seen again after a long-bout of erratic behaviour and sickness. Never mind. Hannibal blinks and the murky thoughts are gone.

“Are you experiencing regret, Will?”

“Experiencing regret at the murders, the torture of humans?” Will meets his eyes and the frail Professor is once again gone. “Their lives feel hardly real. I find it hard to feel regret for the loss of something so ephemeral, even if I have taken it myself plucked it out with my own fingers.”

Hannibal smooths a curl, wraps it around a finger. A large cat playing.

“What was the bad thing Will?”

“I couldn’t tell. I only know it by its results.”

“And what would the results be?”

“My existence.”

Hannibal’s eyes cloud and they exist in shimmering discord for long moments.

“I hoped you would be able to see your magnificence plainly through my eyes, by now. But be it as it may. If I need to work harder to show you, this would be a task I would gladly undertake.”

Will pulls his lips back in a leering grimace. Hannibal licks into the cruel expression, paws at the taught cheeks until he lets go with a great howl.

“Fuck, Hannibal”, a flash of a smile, subtle. Contained. “You’ll be the death of me.”

  
———————

  
Will doesn’t experience fear until he feels the right pair of footsteps. It is wrong. The right foot drags, the left steps hard, nothing like the usual measured grace of Hannibal’s gait.

The woman who’s name was Perez cocks her gun as Hannibal limbs his way through the clearing. She is about to call it in, her partner three steps behind. Will is on them with the barest flicker of ether, a hand buried in each chest.

“Don’t” Hannibal’s voice is a bit thick “If you kill them you turn this property into a crime scene, and then there is nothing I can do.”

Will smiles because there hasn’t been anything he can do, not since the moment Miriam Lass connected the dots while standing over his desk one frosty December evening. And then he lets go of the agents, and they crumble to the ground, limbs splayed.

Hannibal kneels by Perez and feels for a heartbeat. He is satisfied.

“Clever boy” he gets up, stumbling something fierce. Will is frozen in place. Hannibal consumes him with his eyes.

“My clever, perfect boy. What terrible tricks have you learned in my absence. How have you grown”

And then, deflated.

“Forgive me, for I broke the promise”. Will can’t take the affect in Hannibal’s voice. It was never supposed to sound like that. More than the absence, this battered, ravenous form of his once terrible monster is marking the end. Of. And Will is taken over by dread. He needs to be back under the stream, he needs the feelings to stop. Dissipate.

“Where are you going Will? Stay with me”, and it is too late because Hannibal takes another step and they are touching. And Will slips inside and there is one perfect moment of peace, of silence and then he feels his - Hannibal’s - fingers tighten around a curved blade and Hannibal’s fear merges with his in a miasmatic unholy union.

The skin around the knife sears and bubbles. Will rips his consciousness out and chokes out “No”.

Hannibal recovers, slower than usual.

“We have two hours. Less than. Before Uncle Jack is back with his hellhounds.”

Silence.

“You wanted to kill me once.”

Will won’t respond.

“Will, I am not immortal. This is how it would always end. The only difference is the time-frame.”

Will gasps, looks down. There is a fine tremor on the ground, a few branches and small rocks dance for a heartbeat or two.

“What the hell” and the ground starts shaking “What the actual hell were you thinking”.

“Will - ” pleading.

“That you would get yourself caught, bring them here, and then put a knife in my fingers, deep in your belly and then what? What Hannibal?”

“Will” a warning.

“You would blink back into existence, the only other ghost from the dozen odd people we have killed in here? What would make you that special?”

“Will” choked.

“And then what? We get to haunt together for eternity? What happens to your corpse? Do you even know what happens when I see mine?”

Nothing.

“Or do we wait until Jack comes back, anger festered, vengeance for his understudy you couldn’t help slaughtering, and takes both our corpses to the morgue, to the evidence locker, to - “

The earth stills. There is a tear running down the side of Hannibal’s face, the right side - his left eyes is too swollen for tears to flow. It reaches his lips, burns on a cut. He smiles and a bead of red blossoms from the cut.

“You are right. I have been spoiled so thoroughly by the miracle you are, that I convinced myself of the certainty of another.” He looks up, and Will sees himself through Hannibal’s eyes for the first time in weeks.

There are no bloodstains on his face. He doesn’t know if the river washed them clean or whether he just forgot how to have them. His curls are thick, heavy with water from the stream. His veins are blue and green like seaweed, eyes frosted over. His mouth is tight, a thin line of hurt, and he is loved so, so much, it feels like a gunshot wound to the chest.

“We have two more hours” Will rasps, and he is closer again, chests touching - the shared ache halved, salved by proximity.

“Less than.”

They kiss, and there is blood, and it feels like always and like never again.

Hannibal breaks the kiss first. He is pale - the car crush bruised something, many somethings inside.

“I will need to make some phone calls.” Something like rock, firm and certain and stable, is back in his voice.

Will walks around him, hovers, touches and steals his scent. Hannibal walks up to the house, makes three calls on Perez’s phone. He patches some of the cuts. He touches Will, gentles him, walks them both to the attic. And then the knife is back in his fingers.

Eyes lock, red on newly blue.

“If you won’t take my life, let me at least leave you something of mine.”

Will is hyper-focused on the slow play of the scarce sun rays on the blade.

“You will not be able to play the harpsichord with only one hand” Will says.

“That would indeed make certain compositions difficult.” Hannibal smiles. “Not to mention, it would take far too long with just this one knife.”

And then he wraps his right hand around his left ring-finger and pulls, dislocating it. Three deep cuts and a wet pull.

“Four fingers should be enough for keeping the tempo.”

Will keeps the words locked inside of him. Because letting them spill would be admitting the end. And he can’t. So he picks up the finger, wrapped in cloth and cradles it and says “You need to go. They will be here any moment.”

Hannibal nods.

The footsteps move away from Will, down the stairs. Further and further away, while the sirens in the distance grow louder.  
  


———————  
  


The next day, instead of the loud boots of Feds, a single van arrives. A single piece of paper gets taped on his front door, surrounded by police tape and red seals.

It is a court order, Will makes himself read. Promising peace and quiet for a fair amount of time. He brings his forehead to the paper and smiles, luxuriating in Hannibal's last gift.

And so Will, who has now taken up residence inside a rusty chest in the attic, is shocked into action when mere weeks later, light footsteps arrive to the door and fingers, firm but gentle, undo his seals, one after another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Something wicked this way comes" takes on an entirely different context when "this way" is a haunted murder house with actual skeletons. But this, in no way precludes the potential wickedness of what is to come.

**Author's Note:**

> For Pragnificent, who writes stories that are heart-breaking and huge, yet always kind and and fair and true to Will and Hannibal. Whose endless gentleness and honest love of the characters and the act of story-telling reminded me why I love this series so much, but more than anything, made me love writing again. Endlessly thankful to have read your stories and for always heart-warming and meaningful words!
> 
> Feeding the Dead picks up where Hungry Ghost ended, heavily influenced damnslippyplanet's magnificent Good Bones. I love this universe so much, it somehow turned into a multi-chapter love affair. Shockingly, for me, I have already written about 80% of the story, and will be trying to upload it within the next two weeks.


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